A Slytherin Without Ambition
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [AU] The Sorting Hat made a mistake in placing her (Ruuko) in Slytherin. It just must have. (Spoiler: it didn't.)
1. 1

**A/N:** Written for Aiko Isari for the Holiday Party event through the Challenge Zone. And for once, there's no digimon in sight. Funny how that happened...

Also for the Mega Prompts Challenge, game prompts 201 - Snakes and Ladders

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 **A Slytherin Without Ambition**  
1.

Slytherin is the house for the ambitious.

Ruuko is sure the Sorting Had made a mistake in putting her there, and her classmates agree. Akira is particularly vocal in her wishes, but Iona is an amateur model in the muggle world and the daughter of two business entrepreneurs and the envy of most first year girls.

Except the pureblood elitists, of course. There are still a few of them, but much less than back when the Second Wizarding War was in full swing.

Then there's Yuzuki, whose aspirations are a lot closer to her heart but still the kind she'll give earth and limb for –

And Ruuko doesn't have that, doesn't have anything like that and why did the Sorting Hat place her in this proverbial nest of vipers?


	2. 2

**A Slytherin Without Ambition**  
2.

Slytherin isn't just the house for the ambitious. It's the house for people who'll do anything for those ambitions.

Yuzuki at least is straightforward. She jabs her wand into Ruuko's chest, sees Ruuko has absolutely no interest in her brother (or boys at all, really – with Ayumu the only exception – considering what a disappointment her father had turned out to be) and decides Ruuko will make a fine friend. And it's a good thing she does, because Ruuko somehow gets onto Akira's bad side within seconds of meeting her, and having Yuzuki standing beside her is a huge comfort.

Doesn't stop Akira from playing rather cruel pranks on Ruuko's other new friend at Hogwarts, the meek Hufflepuff Hitoe, in retaliation.

Also doesn't stop Ruuko from accidentally firing a blasting course at the other's face. And it's not for self-defence, or defending Hitoe who's cowering behind her. It's only because Akira needs to be taught a lesson and the spell's shot out from her fingertips before she's even drawn her wand or thought of the spell she wants to cast.


	3. 3

**A Slytherin Without Ambition  
3.**

Akira's face scars. She turns sullen and glares every time Ruuko is nearby, and Ruuko's stomach is in knots the entire time. She didn't mean to scar Akira. She didn't even mean to fire a spell, and certainly not something that could kill someone if she'd aimed it wrong.

And she couldn't even cast that spell on intention. It was a fourth year spell, after all. She can barely manage simple levitation. But apparently she's capable of the level of vindication it takes to cause lasting damage on another person with accidental magic… because their innate magic, by default, shies away from causing hurt.

The rest of her housemates are spooked as well. Not Yuzuki who brushes it off as an accident and snaps at anyone who dares say otherwise. Not Kazuki in Ravenclaw either, who Ruuko has gotten to know through Yuzuki and vice versa. Not Hitoe, who in a surprising show of assertiveness tells off a fellow Hufflepuff.

But none of them know quite what to say to Urazoe Iona's sudden interest in Ruuko.


	4. 4

**A Slytherin Without Ambition  
4.**

Iona says Ruuko has ambition: the same ambition, in fact, as hers. Ruuko doesn't get it until she does, and then she's backpedalling right into the pumpkin patch.

Yuzuki and Hitoe find her, convince her she's wrong, sneak her into the Hogwarts kitchens and feed her marshmallows and hot chocolate that can rival her grandmother's. It makes her feel a bit better, and when she goes home for Christmas her grandmother and Ayumu do the rest.

Akira doesn't cause any more trouble. Iona, realising Ruuko doesn't agree with her, is colder than usual in return. The rest of the year passes like that… as far as Ruuko is concerned.


	5. 5

**A Slytherin Without Ambition  
** 5.

Hitoe runs afoul of a bad memory charm by one of the older students, and the teachers can't quite reverse it. It takes the rest of the year to patch up their friendship.

Akira stops her modelling for a time, and then picks it up again. Suddenly, she's a duet with the untouchable Urazoe Iona and people on the outside wonder if it's because they attend the same school and are in the same dorm, as mentioned in their interviews. Iona just smiled when the question was asked. Akira just simpered gratefulness to Iona. The Slytherins who did in fact share a dorm with the pair of them didn't quite know what to make of it. Acts of altruism were rare from Iona, but on the other hand what did Akira offer that Iona didn't already have? Maybe it was a crush of sorts, the older students thought. But, really, only time would tell.

And as for Yuzuki, she gets her guy in the end… after an incident with polyjuice potion, one of the third year gryffindors, and as a result rumours running ahead of the actual game. Hanayo was sweet, though, once that mess was sorted out. She wound up sort of friends with Yuzuki in the end.


	6. 6

**A Slytherin Without Ambition  
6.**

The second year begins with a literal bang, when Ruuko is knocked into the train by an excitable new girl. 'Hi,' she trills, bouncing on her heels. 'I'm Tama. What's your name?'

She sounds younger than eleven, but she must be that to be attending. And she is determined to insert herself into their group of friends and they aren't too keen on stopping her. After all, Tama is nice, and fun, and new, and winds up in the Hufflepuff dorms with Hitoe, and they don't see any reason not to be friends with her.

But Tama is also impulsive and easily flies off the handle in the face of Slytherin's prejudice. Before Yuzuki can say something in counter, Tama will have already launched a spell. As a first year, they are hardly destructive (unlike Ruuko and her accidental blasting curse) but she is forming a bad habit of it. And when they stop her, "don't you want to stop them?" she'll ask. "Don't you want to get them back?"

Nonono, Ruuko thinks. But it is already too late for that, wasn't it?


	7. 7

**A Slytherin Without Ambition  
7.**

Iona's grey eyes watch them both: Ruko, and Tama too. 'Interesting friend you've found,' she comments carelessly, one time. 'I suppose like attracts like.'

Ruuko thinks she is the polar opposite of Tama, really, but she knows what Iona means. 'It was a mistake,' she says quietly. 'That's all.'

She's ranked second in the year, under Iona. Same as last year. She doesn't care. Neither does Iona.

Between them… is something else entirely.

'I want to see you fight,' Iona admits, another time, 'without restraint nor care.'

'I won't fight for the sake of fighting,' Ruuko protests.

'We'll see.' Iona wanders off, and Ruuko watches her back. That sounds almost like a threat, even if Iona's tone hadn't changed at all.


	8. 8

**A Slytherin Without Ambition  
8.**

Akira hasn't forgotten her scar, or her insult. She sends spells towards Ruuko's table in almost every class, and Ruuko has to keep upgrading her shields to manage. She is lucky she has friends in other houses. She is lucky Kazuki is well-liked amongst his classmates, especially since the rest of their little clique aren't. She is lucky that friends of friends, and their families, are pitching in to her extra-curricular education. And she is lucky there are some people who hated bullies and shields are just the cornerstone to protecting students from them.

And she is unlucky that Akira is relentless. And when she tires of going after Ruuko, she goes after her friends as well. Yuzuki winds up with a month's worth of detentions in the Forbidden Forest. Tama, on and off, joins her.

Then a tripping jinx sends poor Hitoe stumbling down the stairs and enough is enough.

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 **A/N:** Just want to say here that Hitoe is a gorgeous character and I have absolutely nothing against her. Akira just kidnaps her in canon.


	9. 9

**A Slytherin Without Ambition  
9.**

Akira is a model, but when she's angry, her face twists into something ugly. Ruuko is reminded of her mother, the way her face warped when she cried and she was always crying. They have the official duel Akira has declared, while Hitoe recuperates in the Hospital Wing. Tama, with her own assertion, stands behind Ruuko. Iona, a smirk on her lips, stands behind Akira.

Tama yells encouragements that has Ruuko's blood pounding in her ears. Iona does nothing at all. Not even when Akira falls to her knees and burst into tears and Ruuko lowers her wand. Not until after Tama grumbles that the show was over, and Ruuko's head spins as the adrenaline leaks out. Not even when she takes in the chaotic stage, the bruising and the blood: both their blood.

She's dropped the shields, the defence, early on and never put it back.

'An all-out fight,' Iona says, looking satisfied. She ignores Akira reaching for her, ignores the muttering of the crowd.


	10. 10

**A Slytherin Without Ambition**  
10.

Iona is wrong. Ruuko has told herself this last year and now again. Iona is wrong.

When the junior duelling competition opens for sign-ups, Ruuko ignores the prodding of her friends (moreso Tama) and refuses to partake.

Someone else puts her name in anyway. Ruuko thinks Iona, until Tama admits to it. 'You need to,' she pleads, even after Ruuko walks away.

And Tama is right. Ruuko can't hide in the crowd long enough to forfeit. Her feet carries her onto that stage.

Her wand carries her to the quarter finals. She beats Hitoe there. Iona beats Kazuki. Then the semi-finals. Iona beats Yuzuki. Ruuko beats Tama – and Tama had been right. It is really fun; a friendly all-out duel between friends.

Then the finals.


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**A Slytherin Without Ambition**  
11.

The finals are a far cry from the semi-finals. Not fun, but equally necessary. They aren't just fighting each other, but Iona's preconceptions, Ruuko's lack of understanding about her ambition… They are fighting for their _reason_ to fight, and Ruuko has them: for her friends, for herself, to get to know people at that intimate level she just can't manage by talking to them… And it iss a recurring theme, she realises. She's met all her friends that way, after a fashion. Yuzuki defending her, defending Hitoe. Kazuki giving them the knowledge to fight back. Tama cheering them on. Even Akira and Iona, being the antitheses to help her understand all that.

Iona has been right, in a sense. They are similar in the sense that they are the sort of people who have to fight to find their aspirations. But she is also wrong. She doesn't fight for the sake of fighting, for the sake of watching other people's suffering (and Iona does that, she's realised, somewhere between Akira's public humiliation and that final match), or for that doped up feeling of adrenaline (and Iona does that too, if that lopsided, sweating grin is anything to go by) but to protect her friends, and herself, and the things she holds dear.

And, this time, she thinks she can hold on to her family too.


	12. 12

**A Slytherin Without Ambition**  
12.

Iona doesn't have friends, Ruuko realised afterwards. She has people who admire or antagonise her from a distance, and her parents, supporting from a distance. Everyone at a distance.

Once upon a time, everyone was distant from Ruuko too but then her mother gave up on her. She'd been bitter at the time, but looking back now it's for the best. She's sad now, years later, but her mother hadn't known her after the separation and she hadn't known her mother. They hadn't fought for each other – or, really, fought each other. They'd just stayed out of each other's ways until it was too painfully awkward and Ruuko's grandmother showed up to whisk her away. Now though, now is a different story. Ruuko has found friends in Hogwarts, and she has fought for them.

She'd continue fighting for them, too, even if she made enemies of people like Akira and Iona along the way. People who are willing to accept the risks of their ambitions and still head for that summit with their entire being… That is, after all, what being a Slytherin is all about.


End file.
